your future's unclear and I don't have time to love you
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: "You've made a liar of me." — Rebekah, Stefan, then, now and Chicago.


**disclaimer:** i don't own anything.  
**dedication:** to my faithful readers from all fandoms, ilu. you've really encouraged me and i want to say thanks. so here's stebekah. also, an anon requested rebekahxripper!stefan, i think i kind of delivered what was being asked, right? uh, idk, i tried. anyways, you guys can request stuff too, just not on ffnet. come onto my tumblr blog and drop a request in my ask box and i'll get back to you, okay? PLEASE DON'T ASK ME IN A REVIEW. GO TO MY TUMBLR. PLZ.  
**warning:** sex? nah, i'm a tease? maybe some reference to dry-humping? tasteful dry-humping? haha, no, not really. i guess there's some swearing, some sexy talk, and some post-sex description i guess?  
**notes:** tvd fandom you has gone low. i keep waiting for pretty pink lips to post up a new story so i can give her a monstrous review for the one she gave me in 'a grave word'. malia really knows how to cheer a girl up and her reviews always make me happy, and your reviews peeps, they always make me happy.  
**even moar notes:** lyrics belong to the fratellis, from a song called 'moriarty's last stand'.

* * *

.

.

.  
Well there's a thousand heartbreaks dead at your door,  
And they wouldn't take money to be you; Lazy old girl caught in the swirl of lasts night's invitation.  
You make me want to gnaw on a bone and my jaw is in very much need of attention.  
I'm sorry my dear but your future's unclear and I don't have time to love you,  
There's a dirty old ghost making the most, dying on the floor above you.  
I speculate on why you look great...I never was good with words,  
But you spent half the time looking behind  
And I spent it looking forwards.  
.

.

.

* * *

Rebekah doesn't want to be here, she doesn't want to be in '_the now'_. She wants to be back in the 20's, with Nik and his acerbic smile, with Stefan and his eyes forever alight. She wants to go back to Chicago where the lights never go out and everyone thinks like they can live forever. She wants Stefan, _her_ Stefan.

Sometimes she sees glimmers of him and it's too cruel, she thinks he _can't_ be doing it on purpose, but then there's a particular slant of his grin, the strange spark of his eyes that suddenly makes him seem less foreign, more like _her_ Stefan. He can't _not_ know what he's doing, he can't not _know_ how it seizes the breath in her throat and makes her want to die with want and hatred of it all.

She _loved_ him. He forgot her, it was so easy for him to forget her - but he'd been compelled, what more did she want from him? What did she want from him now?

She rips his diary in half, tears it to pieces in her fingertips. When Stefan returns there's an empty bottle on the floor and she's waiting for him by the fire. Sat prim and haughty across from it, staring it down.

Stefan sighs, asks her mournfully, with eyes tragic enough to make him seem like the victim. Like she's the one who forgot him, like she's the one who _never gave a damn._ "What do you want from me?" And then he _sighs_ at the paper scattered across the table.

It's not the reaction she wanted. She thinks she'd be happier if he'd strike back hotly, if he'd pitch his words low and furious - not quiet and with the sort of enduring patience that comes from dealing with nothing more than childish antics.

That's what she is to him, spoilt silly and irrational. She's not allowed to be real and truly sad, to be miserable and desperate and furious. To Stefan, to Klaus, to Kol; she's nothing more than a selfish brat who doesn't know how to feel anything properly enough to be considered true.

But she does, _Rebekah feels everything_. She hasn't lived at all, she hasn't lived at all since Chicago - they put her in a box, they shut her away, they think she's just being _silly._

Rebekah wants to cry, _I wanted you to love me. I wanted you to stay with me, I wanted to go away with you. I loved you. I loved you. I love you -_

"You write every bloody thing down, don't you?" She drawls instead, finds that thread of detachment. Slams her the door of her heart shut so hard he can't see all the devastation he's wrought up in her threaten to burn up her eyes. She's played at being a Duchess, held court with Queens and warlords - she's not some silly girl who can't hold a diplomatic enough air to get away with not feeling anything. "It'd be detrimental to the secrecy of what we're doing."

"I _hid_ these -"

"Not well enough, I found them."

He sighs, eyes lifted imploringly skywards.

The toes of her boots skim the carpet idly, a little too insistently though. She doesn't know why she bothers hiding her rage, really - is it because she's proud? She's royalty, royalty must need be aloof - no, even when it's there bubbling to the surface, pouring out of her eyes, Stefan doesn't notice and _Stefan doesn't care._

"What was the page that made you think you'd had enough."

Her mouth curls, of course. "It's a tedious work, all of it." _How the mighty have fallen,_ she doesn't have to say, but it's heard. "…I'm not in any of it, am I?"

When he doesn't answer, she throws her drink into the fire. She likes the sound the glass makes when it snaps in the heat, the spark of brandy catching like gasoline. There's a vicious satisfaction she finds in the way it makes him flinch, just a little, but it's shallow; a hollow triumph that rises in her lungs and dies fast like a single gun shot. Of course.

_Of course._

* * *

And then she's sobbing, great wracking cries that rip her from chest to throat. She's so stupid, it's always her, she's always loosing and she's so tired. What's the use of living forever? She can't ever be free. She won't ever be loved; not Alexander, not Matt and not Stefan.

She's bratty and she's petulant, but she never asked for much. She doesn't want the world like Nik does, doesn't want to cause a ruckus like Kol does, doesn't want to set to rights anything that she wasn't responsible for making wrong. She just wants _him_, she wants Stefan to slow dance with her like they used to, to drape his palms around her throat and rest his thumb in the hollow like he was cradling a jewel. _Like she couldn't be anyone else's except his._

She wants Stefan who was mean, brash, but always reeling with hurt, with guilt beneath all the malice. He was broken, but he was _her_ broken, and she wanted _him._

She'd called him baby face, and he'd grinned, all teeth.

All the blood, the fucking. They were the center of a universe, imploding, exploding. They were _crazy._

They have an odd little partnership now, it deteriorates quickly into sex. For a stolen moment, when he grabs her hair and shoves her back into the mattress, his lips hot and gaping at her throat, he's her Ripper again.

No attachments, no feelings, nothing.

She's a fucking _liar._

* * *

_What do you want?_ He'd asked.

"I want to be loved," Rebekah had known immediately, her heart betrayed itself to her mind. Her unspoken thoughts are miserable. "no questions asked, no holds barred. I want to love with my whole heart and make it all worthwhile. Don't you know? I've tried, I've tried.."

She's not asking for the world.

She's not even asking for Chicago, or Stefan, or anyone in particular, really - just…she just wants _someone_ who will love her. She wants someone who won't think twice, who won't ask why, same as she never had; not with the thinking twice, not with asking questions.

She's loved with her whole heart for so long; they've taken all of it, eaten everything up. Niklaus and his selfish need to have her loyal to him forever, and Stefan and his reckless grin. She's never asked, she's always _given._

_There's nothing left,_ she wants to cry out to Kol, to beg, he always listened to her. But on this, on Silas and the cure, it seems they've crossed swords. He's even more dangerous than Nik, because he knows the benefits of letting people think he's insane, he knows when to become all parts murdering psycpath for true when it serves his own causes. He's the one to be afraid of, _he's_ the one to watch. There's a reason he's been in the box longest, _let me do this one thing. Let me have this one thing!_

With the cure she might have a chance, she doesn't know how, only that if she doesn't try she'll never know.

* * *

Later, his arm thrown behind his head, smirking at the ceiling crooked. She sat against the headboard, bare and naked, old Stefan used to laugh at her when she pretended to be modest - he used to tear her out of her clothes and bite down on her to his gums. He used to say she was _immortal,_ she was a _godess_, she was an _animal_ - he used to say she should walk everywhere naked, sleek and nimble as a cheetah. Because that's what she was, he would murmur, his eyes brilliant green and hungry - _always hungry_ - he used to say _cheetah_, a predator. Something too wild for clothes.

_You love ripping me out of them, don't you?_ She laughed, he counted every edge in her spine with his tongue, scraping his teeth down her skin and tickling her. _If I'm always naked you'll have nothing to rip off me, it won't be fun._

_I'll rip you out of your skin,_ he promised fervently, _I'll pull it away and peel it off and I'll kiss you all over - all over._

She's given him her heart, now he pretended he'd lost it, like he didn't have it anymore. Was it truly all so easy for him?

"Second thoughts?" Stefan taunted, his eyes never left her own, they danced though, when she decided to pull up the sheets to her chest. Like he _remembered._

"Fancy free," she snapped back tartly, but he drew himself onto his side, propped so his eyes could take her apart again. "Stefan?" She wanted to ask if he remembered all of it, when Nik told him he could remember it all - did he really remember all of it? Did he remember the little room in Harlem? The way he said he wanted to peel away her skin and crawl into her bones? Or was it all a blur to him he could only distinguish in pieces. She didn't want to know, that would be too painful, a betrayal he wouldn't even be aware of enough to feel sorry for. Rebekah remembered it all, had relived it in the dark, in her dreams for a hundred years in her brother's box. If he said that she didn't think she could bear it. She changed tactics, he was waiting for her question. "What was it that made you...want me?"

"God, do you want me to marry you now?"

She smacked his arm, "No, you _dick_." He was such an unrepentant _ass_, "I'm not talking about this, I'm talking about _then_."

_Then_, oh what a word _then_! What a time ago! What a time it was.

"What was it that made you want me in _Chicago_. I mean the first time we met, before you knew I was crazy."

"You're still crazy," He grinned, hearty, it wasn't as vicious as she remembered, it still crawled with meanness, but it wasn't so horrible. "...You really want to know?"

"Yes." She said, adamantly.

"Well," his eyes grew wry, his eyes a little like she remembered, green rippling, green as bottle glass thrown in a bar fight. "You were so proper, so haughty, it made me want to muss you up."

_Well, congratulations, _Rebekah can't help it, she thinks viciously that she shouldn't have even asked. What else was she expecting? It's Stefan, he's a sadist, he'd never been sorry when it came to her, not before, not ever._ You more than mussed me up. You destroyed me._

It must show in her eyes, she can feel them stinging at the corners, swimming. Stefan's face crumples suddenly, remembers who he is, remembers he's _not that boy anymore_ - he's the boy who cares about _people_ and their _feelings_ now, he's not allowed to be reckless. She thinks that's stupid, because the way he surges towards her like he wants to kiss the misery of her eyes away is pretty reckless. For no attachments and no feelings and _all that bullshit_, he still kisses her like he's taking away a part of her that he won't give back.

Stefan always leads the girls on, she shoves him back into the sheets so she can crawl onto his chest, so he can _stop kissing her_. He never gives any of her back. The sheet slides down her shoulder off her back when she claws her hands around his arms, pins him down.

"Don't kiss me like that," she should have said. "You've made a liar of me." She would have said.

Stefan's eyes search her like he's trying to learn her.

_You stupid idiot, you already know me. You knew all of me._

She likes being on top like this, pressed flush against him, the skin of his stomach hot against her. Her thighs wrap tight on either side of him. She thinks of Chicago, but she also thinks of the dagger he so easily let be slipped into her heart.

She bends over him, her chest brushing his, likes how, despite all the time that's passed, she can _still_ make him shudder with her teeth scraping across his jaw, with her hissing in his ear so his body jolts, yearns viciously up against her. "Now, are you going to talk or are you going to fuck me?"

Stefan doesn't do anything halfway.

She doesn't let him kiss her again though, not tonight. She won't give him that, not anymore.

* * *

.

.

**.  
**Well the stars were pink and the knickers were few and the whole place smelled of boredom,  
And you would've gone home with the prettiest boy. Well, you would've but you couldn't afford him  
In sixteen months you've only smiled once and you didn't need an invitation;  
You fell up the stairs the wrong way round but I didn't have the heart to mention  
I'm sorry my dear but your future's unclear and I don't have time to love you,  
There's a dirty old ghost making the most, dying on the floor above you.  
I speculate on why you look great...I never was good with words,  
But you spent half the time looking behind  
And I spent it looking forwards  
.

.

.

* * *

**end notes: **so drop me a review, if you'd like. and don't be afraid to drop me a line on tumblr either!


End file.
